rom where I sit, the Google Navigation solution for Android 2.0 looks to be essentially the final nail in the coffin of the current generation of GPS navigation devices. I want it on my iPhone yesterday.

I’ve read a lot today about how the requirement for a constant data connection makes the app basically useless. I don’t think so. For one thing, a huge chunk of the potential users live and will only use the device in cities or other places with adequate coverage. I’ve used the MotionX-GPS Drive application which is available right now for a mere $2.99 (about $200 less than the full TomTom iPhone solution). It works pretty well when in a data coverage area. Unfortunately, it acts just like a traditional GPS unit, and as of today, that’s not enough. The Google solution will be just as functional but with all the sweet added features leveraged from other parts of the Mountain View campus (voice recognition, street view, satellite views). Game changing.

But what about routes that do go beyond data coverage? Maybe I’m just being too simple, but I would think that for 99% of use cases, the following solution would work:

1. You pick a destination, gNav calculates a route.

4. It just works.

Perhaps you have some preferences to set (always cache maps for entire routes v. only for areas of probably data loss, cache maps to 5 miles beyond the route v. to 10 or 60 miles, remember that I’m on AT&T and be freakishly conservative when you look at the coverage maps) but it seems this is a pretty easy nut to crack.

And with the head start Google has on satellite imagery and especially Street View, this game is over.

The only real disadvantage I can see to this solution is that for a heavy navigation user, this may take your phone out of commission for too much time, but what’s to stop someone from building a dedicated Android GPS drive.

Look, I’m not a rocket surgeon, but I don’t think you need to be one to see that the Wall Street reaction to the Google Nav announcement was completely appropriate.

Google will own the Navigation market within 5 years.

ecent evolution in my job has me attending what I would consider to be too freaking many meetings. And they really aren’t that bad but what has required some workflow adjustment for me is figuring out whether and how to take notes during these meetings and most importantly how to capture the tasks that will fall on me after the meeting.

Before getting into my current solution, though, let’s step back a year or so to my discovery of Doane Paper. Chad Doane is either a clever fellow who’s discovered a paper design that is perfect for a substantial portion of the folks who write/draw, or he’s in my head like some kind of Cusack in Malkovich and our brains just happen to function alike. I suspect it’s the former. Whichever; Doane Paper is ruled paper combined with graph paper and, at least for me, it just works.

So, back to the meetings. I doodle. I think it helps me concentrate. Some might disagree, but I won’t stop. And I have to capture those tasks. Long story short, I started informally dividing my Doane Paper into sections for these functions. It worked pretty well, but I had ideas for customizing it just a bit more. So, I fired up my favorite Mac app, OmniGraffle, and in literally 10 minutes had a Doane Paper Hack (Chad’s description) that I thought would work. It’s completely customized to what I want, I don’t know nor care if it works for anyone else, but if you fancy downloading a .pdf and checking it out, here it is.

Notes from the first of 4 freaking meetings yesterday (taken with my crappy iPhone camera – my apologies) below.

UPDATE: Chad Doane approves, and says he gets about one Doane Paper hack a week and this is the first he’s liked and granted “official” status.

A few weeks ago at around 2 pm, on the first Saturday of SXSW Interactive, I got to Austin. It was a brief and hastily planned trip, and I timed my arrival to coincide with the likely wake up time of my son, who had worked his usual 11pm-7am shift ending that morning. First on our agenda, a late lunch at Chuy’s. Next up, several hours sitting in a mostly empty coffee shop just talking about life and the future and music and movies and the family. For me, it was much more than a blast.

For parets, days like this are rare. For one thing, it’s not often I get this much time with just one kid. But even more delightfully for Dad, my eldest is right now uniquely equipped for this kind of encounter. Old enough and educated enough that our talks are intellectually stimulating and challenging, and just at the point where his youth and wisdom have intersected to make me a viable mining resource.

It was a great freaking day.

Ironically, at the same time we sat down with chips and salsa at Chuy’s, John Gruber and Merlin Mann opened their “duet rant” at SXSW. I had known this session (ridiculously titled HOWTO: 149 Surprising Ways to Turbocharge Your Blog With Credibility!) was coming, and were it not for the clearly more wonderful opportunity I had in place, I might have thought this one session worth the price of SXSW admission. These guys produce some of my favorite stuff. Gruber’s Daring Fireball is THE source for Mac nerdery; it’s written with a craftsman’s care and skill. Mann’s widely varied products are often genius. One example; You Look Nice Today, with Adam Lisagor and Scott Simpson, a podcast which rarely fails to burn my nostrils with spewing Diet Coke (if your sensibilities are even slightly modest, though, stay away, as there’s nothing politically correct or safe for work about the show).

Anyway, long story short, I had my cake and now I get to eat it too. The Gruber/Mann session’s available as part of the 43 Folders podcast. Check it out, ’cause it’s a doozy.

In fact, my few gentle readers, it’s sparked in me an enthusiasm to tilt this site towards a political/spiritual/ethical obsession of my own. Stay tuned.

MacHeist has announced their latest bundle. And, as with each previous iteration, discussion and criticism have ensued. I’d like to weigh in with some thoughts from a slightly different vantage point.

First, a very brief summary. The main accusation against MacHeist has been that it undervalues the work of Mac developers by offering their products for sale at a massively discounted price. Marco Arment describes this. Apologists for MacHeist point out the advantages for consumers (cheap goods) and developers (cash infusion). No one denies that the folks running MacHeist do very well themselves.

This criticism, careful observers of the Mac world know, has evolved over time. A couple of years ago, Gus Mueller pulled no punches in blasting the offering, but this year his Acorn (a wonderful program for which I’ve already paid the regular price) is part of the package. He says all his concerns about underpaid developers have been addressed. I’ll take his word for it. Elsewhere, John Gruber of Daring Fireball, a former critic, has since accepted advertising from MacHeist. Gruber’s not known for kowtowing; obviously his reservations have also been resolved. There is no doubt that MacHeist has made changes with each iteration. For example, developers are now paid a percentage of sales rather than a flat rate. As such, I can accept that these former gadflies feel their concerns have all been addressed, but that the shift in opinion coincides with money changing hands is nevertheless worth noting.

As for me, the whole thing continues to poke at a corner of my conscience.

First, it’s the organizers. Specifics are easily googled (start with MyDreamApp) and I won’t elaborate, but MacHeist isn’t the first experience these folks have had with ethical criticism and hurt feelings.

Second, I still don’t think it’s best for developers. Okay, I get it, they’re adults, they can decide what to do with their software, it’s their choice. Fine, but just because an adult with free will decides to go to a payday lender/loan shark to borrow money doesn’t mean that loan sharking isn’t morally bankrupt. It is. Even if there are people who’ve been happy with their loan shark experience. That’s not an exact analogy of course, but my point is that doing something of my own free will doesn’t rule out the possibility that someone’s taking advantage of me. In fact, isn’t that how con men work; deceiving the mark into freely making a bad decision. One might even argue that the ultimate con man is the one whose victim who doesn’t even know they’ve been had.

Third, in direct response to one of the apologies made in favor of MacHeist, I have actually already planned to purchase The Hit List and Espresso, so I cannot claim that a fraction of the retail price is more than these developers were going to get from me anyway. Nope, those are both right near the top of my Mac Software shopping to-do list.

Finally, Simone Manganelli sums up a part of how I feel. For me, his conclusion is true:

Fundamentally, what it comes down to is that those consumers who are participating in the MacHeist bundle are tightwads.

So here we are, MacHeist 3 has rolled around, and I don’t think any rational person would say it hasn’t gotten more fair to developers with each iteration, but still, as I outlined above, I won’t be buying it with a clear conscience. If you have no misgivings about doing business with this enterprise, then we can, as Arment also put it, respectfully disagree.

But here’s the rub. My conscience was really ablaze with the first MacHeist. Mueller and Gruber are folks I respect and their criticisms rang true. But guess what, temptation got the better of me. I bought the bundle. Great freaking deal for me, right? By MacHeist 2, I had listened to a MacBreak Weekly series of pros and cons, read some new opinions, seen the Daring Fireball ad, and felt that some of the issues had been addressed. Still, it didn’t feel quite right as I punched in my credit card number and made the purchase. Nice bundle, though. Great deal.

Now, round three, and, despite improvements, as outlined above, I can’t purchase this package with a clear conscience. But will I purchase it anyway?

I’m reminded of my all-time favorite Steve Jobs quote, in regards to “stealing” music:

People need to have the incentive that if they invest and succeed, they can make a fair profit. Otherwise they’ll stop investing. But on another level entirely, it’s just wrong to steal. Or, let’s put it another way: it is corrosive to one’s character to steal.

I’m not all that worried about the developers in this deal.

I’m certainly not worried about the folks at MacHeist.

I’m worried about me.

The Article Skimmer from The New York Times was already my favorite web news interface, but sometime recently, it was updated and now pops the selected article up in a Lightbox type overlay. This is, to me, the nicest online presentation of a newspaper I’ve yet encountered.

It’s doubtful that the currently tiny readership of Ordinary Time hasn’t already seen Merlin Mann’s notes about Kutiman’s incredible YouTube creativity, but as much for my own future reference as yours I have to preserve this stuff.

Unsolicited tip for media company c-levels: if your reaction to this crate of magic is “Hm. I wonder how we’d go about suing someone who ‘did this’ with our IP?” instead of, “Holy crap, clearly, this is the freaking future of entertainment,” it’s probably time to put some ramen on your Visa and start making stuff up for your LinkedIn page.

And, from the department of Aphorisms that are Freaking Brilliant but New to Me (ATAFBBNTM) comes this gem:

Remember: the only person who can sit on your ass is you.

That’s exactly why I’m writing again.

Just saw Gran Torino. I loved its depiction of a surly old man having his defenses relentlessly attacked then breached. I loved its honest depiction of races living together. I loved its depiction of a goofy teenager finding the oddest of all possible role models. As Roger Ebert puts it:

“Gran Torino” is about two things, I believe. It’s about the belated flowering of a man’s better nature. And it’s about Americans of different races growing more open to one another in the new century. This doesn’t involve some kind of grand transformation. It involves starting to see the “gooks” next door as people you love. And it helps if you live in the kind of neighborhood where they are next door.

But perhaps most of all, I was freaking thrilled to see a genuine Catholic priest on the screen who looked like a real live human being trying his best to serve God in the middle of this mixed up world. When asked by Walt if he’d like a beer, you could almost see Father Janovich relax as he admitted, “I’d love one.”

Barbara Nicolosi:

There is also a very cool and respectful religion sub-plot, in which a priest is actually portrayed as a compassionate, thoughtful and three-dimensional human being.

You don’t see that onscreen every day.

Sweet news today. Terrell Owens is gone.

Opinions are mixed today, but I don’t know why. The Dallas Cowboys are better today than they were yesterday. Tony Romo will play better, the offense will be more consistent, and, obviously, the flesh-eating psyche destruction will be less.

Owens said he wanted to retire and go into the Hall of Fame as a Cowboy. Hmmm. That’s taking a lot for granted. Time will tell for Owens, but for all good Cowboys fans, the clock has struck REJOICE.

Stephen Colbert is brilliant. (via Matthew Warner)

WALL-E and Slumdog Millionaire had title sequences that were brilliant and exuberant, respectively, and both significantly contributed to the movie going experience for the films. The designers of those bits absolutely deserve recognition. The New York Times offers this obvious solution for giving Credit Where Credits Are Due.